Reflexions 


on 
Acting 


1 Introduction by 
HENRY IRVING 


tar 


UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA : 
APT ee re eee 
BOOK CARD 


Please keep this Card in 
book pocket 


9999999999 9g 998 
66 67 68 69 79 71 22 13 14 25 26 77-18 19 BB 


39 68 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 14 15 76 17 78 78 


9° 98999999 


35 56 57 58 59 50 61 62 63 ça 65 


Le = 
° “ 
renew Herd 
ww 
En = 
LE 8 er 
pe s m as 
3 es 3 
ds 3 [ os 
‘ a [ a 
3 os 
be g | I ns 
Ne ? | oo 2 
ae | ease o> 
ts = = 
ei [ = 
us 1 
we bay | | [ en © 
12.4) me + [ ae) ome 
wd | EX en 2 
FA > [ — & 
} = | os 
cr 


THE LIBRARY OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF 
NORTH CAROLINA 


ENDOWED BY THE 
DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
SOCIETIES 


Ve | 


j : ee ay Sy iy 


UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 


TMU AL 
00011505739 | 


TR M NN Ae teat 


Wi 
NAN 


x 


POU BOL Cea EONS 
of the 


Dramatic Museum 
OF COLUMBAN NIVMER SD doy 


IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 


Second Series 


Papers on Acting: 


I. 


Il. 


III. 


LV. 


‘THE ILLUSION OF THE First ‘TIME IN 
ACTING. By William Gillette. With an 
introduction by George Arliss. 


(ART AND THE ACTOR.” By Constant Co- 
quelin. Translated by Abby Langdon 
Alger. With an introduction by Henry 
James. 


‘Mrs. SIppDONs AS Lapy MACBETH AND 
QUEEN KATHARINE.’ By H. C. Fleeming 
Jenkin. With an introduction by Brander 
Matthews. 


‘REFLEXIONS ON AcTING. By ‘Talma. 
With an introduction by Sir Henry Irv- 
ing; and a review by H. C. Fleeming 
Jenkin. 


PAPERS ON ACTING 


IV 


Reflexions on the Actor’s Art 


BY 


TALMA 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 


Sir Henry Irvine 


AND A REVIEW BY 


H. C. Freeminc JENKIN 


Printed for the 


Dramatic Museum of Columbia University 
in the City of New York 
MCMXV 


UNIVERSILY LgBRARY 
UNIVERSITY QF NOR TH CAROLINA 
A i CHAPEL | LL 


COPYRIGHT IQI5 BY 
DRAMATIC MUSEUM OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


ae AWE 


tr 


4 by Sir Henry 


i +. ‘i Ny 15 | i e 
_ Reflexions on the Actor’s Art by Talma 


$ 


DRM ccc 


that 
rif) 
au 


AN 


rte 
¢ 


AUTEUR TU AU 
: ut RAA ut Na 
i) “au Gil i ie Al a! 


a 
ENA 
nen Ny 


DONS Co Lhe Ua Ge rere en CoN 


at any time, which will not excite con- 
troversy; but I think one of the few 
is, that the influence of the drama today 1s 
wider than it ever was. There is a vast 
increase of playgoers; the intellectual in- 
terest in the stage is steadily growing; and 
there is a general conviction that the actor 
is placed in a position of trust which he can- 
not worthily fill without a strong sense of 
responsibility. Dramatic artists, as a rule, 
speak for themselves. Their work is con- 
stantly before the public, and it is judged 
on its merits. None the less is there a want 
of a permanent embodiment of the principles 
of our art; a kind of vade mecum of the 
actor’s calling, written by one of themselves, 
and by an artist universally recognized as a 
competent expositor. Such a work, in my 
opinion, is Talma’s essay on the actor's art, 
the following translation of which was orig- 
inally published in the Theater of 1877 at 
my suggestion. 
No one can read Talma’s subtle yet sim- 


| XEW things can be said about the stage 


I 


ple description of the qualities and the course 
of study essential to the actor, without a con- 
viction that acting is one of the most fascin- 
ating of the arts. To the actor the whole 
field of human nature is open. Whether in 
the ideal world of the stage or in the actual 
world of social intercourse, his mind is con- 
tinually accumulating impressions which be- 
come a part of his artistic being. This ex- 
perience is common to the students of other 
arts, but the actor has this advantage, that 
all he learns is embodied in his own per- 
sonality, not translated thru some medium, 
like the painter’s canvas or the novelist’s 
page. At the same time, this purely personal 
art is subjected to the most severe tests. It 
is easier to detect a flaw in an actor’s imper- 
sonation than an improbability in a book. 
The man enacts the character before many 
—a false intonation jars immediately upon 
the ear, an unnatural look or gesture is 
promptly convicted by the eye. ‘The co-oper- 
ation of sensibility and intelligence of which 
Talma speaks, has thus to be conducted 
under the most exacting conditions. There 
must be no suggestion of effort. The essence 
of acting is its apparent spontaneity. Per- 


2 


fect illusion is attained when every effect 
seems to be an accident. If the declamation 
is too measured, the sense of truth is at once 
impaired; if, on the other hand, it falls only 
the shadow of a shade below the level of 
appropriate expression, the auditor's sym- 
pathy is instantly checkt. “The union of 
grandeur without pomp, and nature without 
triviality,” is of all artistic ideals the most 
difficult to attain; and with this goal before 
him no actor can feel that his art is a play- 


thing. 
The end of all acting is “to hold the mir- 
ror up to Nature.” Different actors have 


different methods, but that is their common 
purpose which can be accomplisht only by 
the closest study and observation. Acting, 
like every other art, has a mechanism. No 
painter, however great his imaginative 
power, can succeed in pure ignorance of the 
technicalities of his art; and no actor can 
make much progress till he has mastered a 
certain mechanism which is within the scope 
of patient intelligence. Beyond that, is the 
sphere in which a magnetic personality exer- 
cises a power of sympathy which is irresist- 
ible and indefinable. That is great acting; 


3 


but tho it is inborn, and cannot be taught, 
it can be brought forth only when the actor 
is master of the methods of his craft. 

I am conscious that no words of mine can 
add any weight to the lessons which are set 
forth with such earnestness and brilliance in 
Talma’s pages; but I venture to emphasize 
them by two golden rules. Let the student 
remember, first, that every sentence expresses 
a new thought, and therefore frequently de- 
mands a change of intonation; secondly, that 
the thought precedes the word. ‘The actor 
should have the art of thinking before he 
speaks.” Of course there are passages in 
which thought and language are borne along 
by the stream of emotion, and completely in- 
termingled. But more often it will be found 
that the most natural, the most seemingly 
accidental effects are obtained when the work- 
ing of the mind is visible before the tongue 
gives it words. 

| Henry Irvine. 
(March, 1883.) 


ANA f 


Pease 
Hi 4 
AUS 


LI +) 
id) ee 
NAT 
} 


4 


DAT 
ONE STANT 
NPR Aah 
HAE 


Reflexions on the 
Actor’ s Art 


HAVE no pretension to be an au- 
| thor; all my studies have been directed 

towards my calling, the object of which 
is to afford at once pleasure and instruc- 
tion. Tragedy and Comedy, the one by 
the portraiture of virtue and crime, the 
other by the exposure of vice or folly, in- 
terest us, or make us laugh, while they cor- 
rect and instruct. Associated with great 
authors, actors are to them more than 
translators. A translator adds nothing to 
the ideas of the author he translates. The 
actor, putting himself faithfully in the place 
of the personage he represents, should per- 
fect the idea of the author of whom he is 
the interpreter. One of the greatest misfor- 
tunes of our art is, that it dies, as it were, 
with us, while all other artists leave behind 
them monuments of their works. The talent 
of the actor, when he has quitted the stage, 
exists no longer, except in the recollection 
of those who have seen and heard him. This 


À 


consideration should impart additional 
weight to the writings, the reflexions, and 
the lessons which great actors have left; and 
these writings may become still more useful 
if they are commented upon and discust by 
actors who obtain celebrity in our day. 
Doubtless it is this motive which has induced 
the editors of the ‘Mémoires Dramatiques’ 
to request me to add to the notice of Lekain 
some reflexions on his talent and on the art 
which he illustrated. 

Lekain had no master. || Every actor 
ought to be his own tutor. If he has not in 
himself the necessary faculties for expressing 
the passions, and painting characters, all the 
lessons in the world cannot give them to him. 
Genius is not acquired. This faculty of cre- 
ating is born with us; but if the actor pos- 
sesses it, the counsel of persons of taste may 
then guide him; and as there is in the art of 
reciting verse a part in some degree mechan- 
ical, the lessons of an actor profoundly 
versed in his art may save him much study 
and time. 

Lekain, from the commencement of his 
career, met with great success. His début 
lasted seventeen months. One day, after 


8 


he had performed at Court, Louis XV. said, 
“This man has made me weep,—lI, who 
never weep!” ‘This illustrious suffrage pro- 
cured his admission to the Comédie-Fran- 
caise. Before appearing with it he had ac- 
quired some reputation at private theaters. 
It was in one of these that Voltaire first saw 
and noticed him, and there commenced his 
connection with that great man. 

The system of declamation then in vogue 
was a sort of sing-song psalmody, which had 
existed from the very birth of the theater. 
Lekain,—subjected, in spite of himself, to 
the influence of example,—felt the necessity 
of breaking his shackles and the pedantic 
rules by which the theater was bound. He 
dared to utter for the first time on the stage 
the true accents of nature. Filled with a 
strong and profound sensibility, and a burn- 
ing and communicative energy, his action, 
at first impassioned and irregular, pleased 
the young, who were enchanted by his ardor 
and the warmth of his delivery, and, above 
all, were moved by the accents of his pro- 
foundly tragic voice. The admirers of 
the ancient psalmody criticized him severely, 
nicknaming him ‘the bull.” They did not 


b 


find in him that pompous declamation, that 
chiming and measured declamation, in which 
a profound respect for the cesura and the 
rime made the verses always fall in regular 
cadence. His march, his movements, his at- 
titudes, his action had not that liveliness, 
those graces of our fathers, which then con- 
stituted a fine actor, and which the Marcels 
of the age taught to their pupils in initiating 
them in the beauties of the minute. Lekain, 
a plain plebian, a workman in a goldsmith’s 
shop, had not, it is true, been brought up on 
the laps of queens, as Baron said actors 
ought to be; but nature, a still more noble 
instructress, had undertaken the charge of 
revealing her secrets to him. In time he suc- 
ceeded in overcoming the bad taste which his 
inexperience had at first naturally thrown 
into his acting. He learnt to master its vi- 
vacity and regulate its movements, yet at first 
he dared not entirely abandon the cadenced 
song which was then regarded as the ideal 
of the art of declamation, and which the 
actor preserved even in the burst of pas- 
sion. 

It was to this false taste that we must at- 
tribute the little progress which costume had 


10 


made in the time of Lekain. There is no 
doubt that he regarded fidelity in costume as 
a very important matter. We discover it in 
the efforts he made to render it less ridic- 
ulous than it was at that period. In fact, 
truth in the dresses, as in the decorations, 
contributes greatly to theatrical illusion, and 
transports the spectator to the age and the 
country in which the personages represented 
lived. This fidelity, too, furnishes the actor 
with the means of giving a peculiar physiog- 
nomy to each of his characters. But a rea- 
son still more cogent makes me consider as 
highly culpable the actors who neglect this 
part of their art. The theater ought to of- 
fer to youth in some measure a course of 
living history; and does not this negligence 
give him entirely false notions of the habits 
and manners of the personages whom the 
tragedy resuscitates? I remember well that 
in my early years, on reading history, my 
imagination always represented to itself the 
princes and the heroes whom I had seen at 
the theater. I figured to myself Bayard ele- 
gantly drest in a chamois-colored coat, with- 
out a beard, and powdered and frizzled like 
a petit maitre of the eighteenth century. 


II 


Caesar I pictured to myself highly buttoned 
up in a fine white satin coat, his long, flowing 
locks fastened with rosettes of ribbon. If 
in those days an actor occasionally approxi- 
mated to the antique dress, the simplicity of 
it was lost in a profusion of ridiculous em- 
broidery, and I fancied that silks and velvets 
were as common at Athens and Rome as at 
Paris and London. Statues, monuments, and 
ancient MSS. adorned with miniatures, ex- 
isted then as well as now; but they were not 
consulted. It was the time of the Bouchers 
and the Van Loos, who took care not to fol- 
low the example of Raphael and Poussin in 
the arrangements of their draperies. It was 
only when David appeared that painters and 
sculptors, especially the younger of them, oc- 
cupied themselves, under his inspiration, 
with these researches. Connected with most 
of them, and feeling the utility this study 
might have for the theater, I applied myself 
to it with no common zeal; in my own way 
I became a painter. I had many obstacles 
and prejudices to overcome, but success at 
last crowned my efforts, and without fearing 
an accusation of presumption I may say that 
my example has had a great influence over 


12 


all the theaters of Europe. Lekain could 
not have surmounted so many difficulties; the 
time had not come. Would he have dared to 
risk naked arms, the antique sandals, hair 
without powder, long draperies, and woolen 
stufis? Such a toilet would have been re- 
garded as very offensive, not to say indecent. 
Lekain did all that was possible; he ad- 
vanced the first step, and what he dared to 
do emboldened us to do still more. 

Actors ought at all times to take nature 
for a model, to make it the constant object 
of their studies. Lekain felt that the bril- 
liant colors of poetry served only to give 
more grandeur and majesty to the beauties 
of nature. He was not ignorant that per- 
sons deeply affected by the stronger passions, 
or overwhelmed with great grief, or vio- 
lently agitated by great political interests, 
have a more elevated and ideal language,— 
yet this language is still that of nature. It 
is, therefore, this nature—noble, animated, 
agerandized, but at the same time simple— 
which ought to be the constant object of the 
studies of the actor, as well as of the poet. 
I have frequently heard persons of authority 
state that tragedy is not in nature, and this 


13 


idea has been repeated without reflexion 
until it has become a kind of maxim. The 
world, occupied with other objects, has not 
sufficiently studied all the workings of the 
passions. It judges too lightly, and indiffer- 
ent authors and actors, who pay but little 
attention to their art, serve to accredit this 
error. But let us examine any of the impas- 
sioned or political characters of Corneille 
and Racine. How often their language is at 
once simple and elevated! How pathetic 
and natural is Voltaire when he is inspired 
by a passion! It is not the negligence and 
carelessness of a vulgar conversation that 
we find in the beautiful scenes of those great 
poets. It is the simple language, the aggran- 
dized but exact expression, of nature itself. 
Let us examine from every point of view the 
exposition and dénouement of Rotrou’s ‘Ven- 
ceslas, the fifth act of ‘Rodogune’ and 
‘Cinna,’ the part of Horatius, the scenes of 
Agamemnon and Achilles, the parts of Joad, 
Œdipe, the two Brutuses, César, the parts of 
Phèdre, Andromaque, Hermione, &c. | 
defy any person to give them a finer or more 
natural form of expression. Take away the 
rime, and all these personages would have 


14 


exprest themselves in the same manner as in 
real life. It is the same with some actors 
who have adorned the French stage, as Le- 
kain, Mlle. Dumesnil, Molé and Monvel. 
It was only by a faithful imitation of truth 
and nature that they succeeded in creating 
those powerful emotions in an enlightened 
nation which still exist in the recollection of 
those who heard them. It must, however, be 
confest that, amongst the great actors of all 
countries, only a few have sought after this 
truth. Molière, and Shakspere before him, 
had given excellent lessons to their brethren, 
the one in his ‘Impromptu de Versailles’ and 
the other in ‘Hamlet.’ How comes it, then, 
that in spite of the advice of these two great 
masters, and no doubt, of that of many of 
their contemporaries, the false system of 
pompous declamation had been established 
in almost all the theaters of Europe, and 
proclaimed as the sole type of theatrical imi- 
tation? It is because truth in all art is what 
is most difficult to find and seize. The statue 
of Minerva exists in the block of marble, but 
the chisel of Phidias alone can discover it. 
This faculty has been given to very few 


15 


actors; and mediocrity, being in the major- 
ity, has laid down the law. 

I may here be permitted to make an ob- 
servation which has been suggested to me 
by the great event of the Revolution, for its 
violent crises, of which I was a witness, have 
often served me as a study. The man of the 
world and the man of the people, so opposite 
in their language, frequently express the 
great agitations of the mind in the same way. 
The one forgets his social manners, the 
other quits his vulgar fancies. The former 
descends to nature, the latter remounts to it. 
Each puts off the artificial man to become 
natural and true. The accent of each will be 
the same in the violence of the same passions 
or the same sorrows. Picture to yourself a 
mother intently looking on the empty cradle 
of a child she had just lost; a sort of stupid- 
ity in the features, a few tears flowing down 
her cheeks at distant intervals, piercing cries 
and convulsive sobs bursting forth from time 
to time,—these will represent the sorrow of 
a woman of the people the same as that of a 
duchess. Suppose, again, a man of the peo- 
ple and a man of the court to have both 
fallen into a violent fit of jealousy or ven- 


16 


geance; these two men, so different in their 
habits, will be the same in their frenzy; they 
will present in their fury the same expres- 
sion: their looks, their features, their actions, 
their attitudes, their movements will assume 
all at once a terrible, grand, and solemn 
character, worthy in both of the pencil of the 
painter and the study of the actor. And, 
perhaps, even the delirium of passion may 
inspire the one as well as the other with one 
of those words,—one of those sublime ex- 
pressions,—which the poet would conceive. 
The great movements of the soul elevate 
man to an ideal nature, in whatever rank 
fate may have placed him. The Revolution, 
which brought so many passions into play, 
has had popular orators who have astonisht 
all by sublime traits of untutored eloquence, 
and by an expression and accent which Le- 
kain would not have been ashamed of. 
Lekain felt that the art of declamation did 
not consist in reciting verse with more or less 
emphasis, but that this art might be made to 
impart a sort of reality to the fictions of the 
stage. To attain this end it is necessary that 
the actor should have received from nature 
an extreme sensibility and a profound intel- 


17 


ligence, and Lekain possest these qualifica- 
tions in an eminent degree. Indeed, the 
strong impressions which actors create on the 
stage are the result only of the alliance of 
these two essential faculties. I must explain 
what I mean by this. To my mind, sensi- 
bility is not only that faculty which an actor 
possesses of being moved himself, and of af- 
fecting his being so far as to imprint on his 
features, and especially on his voice, that 
expression and those accents of sorrow which 
awake all the sympathies of the art and ex- 
tort tears from auditors. I include in it the 
effect which it produces, the imagination of 
which it is the source,—not that imagination 
which consists in having reminiscences, so 
that the object seems actually present (this, 
properly speaking, is only memory) but that 
imagination which, creative, active and pow- 
erful, consists in collecting in one single ficti- 
tious object the qualities of several real ob- 
jects, which associates the actor with the in- 
spirations of the poet, transports him back 
to the past, and enable him to look on at 
the lives of historical personages or the im- 
passioned figures created by genius,—which 
reveals to him, as tho by magic, their phys- 


18 


iognomy, their heroic stature, their lan- 
guage, their habits, all the shades of their 
character, all the movements of their soul, 
and even their singularities. I also call sen- 
sibility that faculty of exaltation which agi- 
tates an actor, takes possession of his senses, 
shakes even his very soul, and enables him 
to enter into the most tragic situations, and 
the most terrible of the passions, as if they 
were his own. ‘The intelligence which ac- 
companies sensibility judges the impressions 
which the latter has made us feel; it selects, 
arranges them, and subjects them to calcula- 
tion. If sensibility furnishes the objects, the 
intelligence brings them into play. It aids us 
to direct the employment of our physical and 
intellectual forces,—to judge between the 
relations and connections which connect the 
poet and the situation or the character of the 
personages, and sometimes to add the shades 
that are wanting, or that language cannot 
express,—to complete, in fine, their expres- 
sion by action and physiognomy. 

It may be conceived that such a person 
must have received trom nature a peculiar 
organization for sensibility, that common 
property of our being. Every one possesses 


ur 


it in a greater or less degree. But in the 
man whom nature has destined to paint the 
passions in their greatest excesses, to give 
them all their violence, and show them in 
all their delirium, one may perceive that it 
must have a much greater energy; and, as all 
our emotions are intimately connected with 
our nerves, the nervous system in the actor 
must be so mobile and plastic as to be moved 
by the inspirations of the poet as easily as 
the Aeolian harp sounds with the least breath 
of air that touches it. 

If the actor is not endowed with a sensi- 
sibility at least equal to that of any of his 
audience he can move therh but very little. 
It is only by an excess of sensibility that he 
can succeed in producing deep impressions, 
and move even the coldest souls. The power 
that raises must be greater than the power 
raised. This faculty ought ever to exist in 
the actor—T will not say greater or stronger 
than in the poet who conceived the move- 
ment of the soul reproduced on the stage— 
but more lively, more rapid, and more pow- 
erful. The poet or the painter can wait for 
the moment of inspiration to write or to 
paint. In the actor, on the contrary, it must 


20 


be commanded at any moment, at his will. 
That it may be sudden, lively, and prompt, 
he must possess an excess of sensibility. Nay, 
more, his intelligence must always be on the 
watch, and, acting in concert with his sensi- 
bility, regulate its movement and effects; for 
he cannot, like the painter and the poet, 
efface what he does. 

Therefore, between two persons destined 
for the stage, one possessing the extreme 
sensibility I have defined, and the other a 
profound intelligence, I would without ques- 
tion prefer the former. He might fall into 
some errors, but his sensibility would inspire 
him with those sublime movements which 
seize upon the spectator and carry delight to 
the heart. The superior intelligence of the 
other would render him cold and regular. 
The one would go beyond your expectations 
and your ideas; the other would only accom- 
plish them. Your mind would be deeply 
stirred by the inspired actor; your judgment 
alone would be satisfied by the intelligent 
actor. The inspired actor will so associate 
you with the emotions he feels that he will 
not leave you even the liberty of judgment; 
the other, by his prudent and irreproachable 


21 


acting, will leave your faculties at liberty to 
reason on the matter at your ease. The for- 
mer will be the personage himself, the latter 
only an actor who represents that personage. 
Inspiration in the one will frequently supply 
the place of intelligence; in the other the 
combinations of intelligence will supply only 
feebly the absence of inspiration. To form 
a great actor, like Lekain, the union of sen- 
sibility and intelligence is required. 

The actor who possesses this double gift 
adopts a course of study peculiar to himself. 
In the first place, by repeated exercises, he 
enters deeply into the emotions, and his 
speech acquires the accent proper to the situ- 
ation of the personage he has to represent. 
This done, he goes to the theater not only to 
give theatrical effect to his studies, but also 
to yield himself to the spontaneous flashes of 
his sensibility and all the emotions which it 
involuntarily produces in him. What does 
he then do? In order that his inspirations 
may not be lost, his memory, in the silence 
of repose, recalls the accent of his voice, the 
expression of his features, his action,—in a 
word, the spontaneous workings of his mind, 
which he had suffered to have free course, 


22 


and, in effect, everything which in the mo- 
ments of his exaltation contributed to the 
effect he had produced. His intelligence then 
passes all these means in review, connecting 
them and fixing them in his memory, to re- 
employ them at pleasure in succeeding repre- 
sentations. These impressions are often so 
evanescent that on retiring behind the scenes 
he must repeat to himself what he had been 
playing rather than what he had to play. By 
this kind of labor the intelligence accumu- 
lates and preserves all the creations of sen- 
sibility. It is by this means that at the end 
of twenty years (it requires at least this 
length of time) a person destined to display 
fine talent may at length present to the pub- 
lic a series of characters acted almost to per- 
fection. Such was the course which Lekain 
constantly took, and which must be taken by 
every one who has the ambition to excel on 
the stage. The whole of his life was de- 
voted to this kind of study, and it was only 
during the last five or six years of his life, 
béparen 177207) 1772 -and\1778, that he 
reaped his fruit: It was then that his fertile 
sensibility raised him to the tragic situations 
he had to paint, and his intelligence enabled 


43 


him to display all the treasures he had 
amassed. It was then that his acting was 
fixt on such bases, and was so subservient to 
his will, that the same combinations and the 
same effect presented themselves without 
study. Accent, inflexions, action, attitudes, 
looks, all were reproduced at every represen- 
tation with the same exactness, the same 
vigor; and if there was any difference be- 
tween one representation and another, it was 
always in favor of the last. Sensibility and 
intelligence, therefore, are the principal 
faculties necessary to an actor. Yet these 
alone will not suffice. Apart from memory, 
which is his indispensable instrument, and 
stature and features adapted to the character 
he has to play, he must have a voice that can 
be modulated with ease, and at the same time 
be powerful and expressive. I need scarcely 
add that a good education, the study of his- 
tory—(not so much the events as the man- 
ners of the people, and the particular charac- 
ter of historical personages)—-and even 
drawing, ought to add grace and strength to 
the gifts of nature. 

It will be well understood that I here 
speak only of tragedy. Without entering 


24 


into the question whether it is more difficult 
to play tragedy or comedy, I will say that 
to arrive at perfection in either, the same 
moral and physical faculties are required, 
only I think the tragedian ought to possess 
more power and sensibility. The comedian 
does not require the same energy; the imag- 
ination in him has less scope. He represents 
beings whom he sees every day—beings of 
his own class. Indeed, with very few excep- 
tions, his task is confined to the representa- 
tions of folly and ridicule, and to painting 
passions in his own sphere of life, and, conse- 
quently, more moderate than those which 
come within the domain of tragedy. It is, 
if I may so express it, his own nature which, 
in his imitations, speaks and acts; whereas 
the tragic actor must quit the circle in which 
he is accustomed to live, and plunge into the 
regions where the genius of the poet has 
placed and clothed in ideal forms the beings 
conceived by him or furnisht by history. He 
must preserve these personages in their 
grand proportions, but at the same time he 
must subject their elevated language to nat- 
ural accents and true expression; and it is 
this union of grandeur without pomp, and 


25 


nature without triviality—this union of the 
ideal and the true, which is so difficult to 
attain in tragedy. I shall, perhaps, be told 
that a tragic actor has a much greater liberty 
in the choice of his means of offering to the 
public objects whose types do not exist in 
society, while the same public can easily de- 
cide whether the comedian furnishes an exact 
copy of his model. I would reply that the 
passions are of all ages. Society may weaken 
their energy, but they do not the less exist 
in the soul, and every spectator is a compe- 
tent judge from his own feelings. With re- 
gard to the great historical characters, the 
enlightened public can easily judge of the 
truth of the imitation. It will therefore ap- 
pear from what I have laid down that the 
moral faculties ought to have more force 
and intensity in the tragic than in the comic 
actor. 

As to the physical qualities, it is evident 
that the pliability of the features and the ex- 
pression of the physiognomy ought to be 
stronger, the voice more full, more sonorous, 
and more profoundly articulate in the tragic 
actor, who stands in need of certain combina- 
tions and more than ordinary powers to per- 


26 


form from the beginning to the end with 
the same energy a part in which the author 
has frequently collected in a narrow com- 
pass, and in the space of two hours, all the 
movements, all the agitations, which an im- 
passioned being can feel only in the course 
of a long life. I repeat, however, that not 
fewer qualities, tho of a different kind, are 
required in a great comedian than in a great 
tragic actor; each has need of being initiated 
into the mysteries of nature, the inclinations, 
the weaknesses, the extravagances of the 
human heart. 

When we consider all the qualities neces- 
sary to form an excellent tragic actor, all the 
gifts which nature should have bestowed 
upon him, can we be surprised that they are 
so rare? Amongst the majority of those 
who go on the stage, one has penetration, but 
his soul is cold as ice. Another possesses 
sensibility, but intelligence is wanting. One 
possesses both these requisites, but in so 
slight a degree, that it is as if he did not 
possess them at all; his acting is character- 
ized neither by energy, expression, nor con- 
fidence, and is without color; sometimes he 
speaks in a loud and sometimes in a low key, 


27 


quickly or slowly, as if by chance. Another 
has received from nature all these gifts, but 
his voice is harsh, dry and monotonous, and 
totally incapable of expressing the passions; 
he weeps without drawing tears from others; 
he is affected and his audience is unmoved. 
One has a sonorous and touching voice, but 
his features are disagreeable; his stature and 
form have nothing heroic in them. In short, 
the requisites for a really great actor are 
so many, and so seldom united in the same 
person, that we ought not to be surprised at 
finding them appear at such long intervals. 

It must be confessed that Lekain had 
some faults; but in literature and in the arts 
of imitation genius is rated in proportion to 
the beauties it creates. Its imperfections 
form no part of its fame, and would be for- 
gotten if they were not allied to noble aspi- 
rations. Nature had refused to Lekain some 
of the advantages which the stage demands. 
His features had nothing noble in them; his 
physiognomy was common, his figure short. 
But his exquisite sensibility, the movement 
of an ardent and impassioned soul, the 
faculty he possessed of plunging entirely 
into the situation of the personage he repre- 


28 


sented, the intelligence, so delicately fine, 
which enabled him to perceive and produce 
all the shades of the character he had to 
paint—these embellisht his irregular fea- 
tures and gave him an inexpressible charm. 
His voice was naturally heavy, and by no 
means flexible. It was to some extent what 
is called a veiled voice, but that very veil 
imparted to it, defective as it was in some 
respects, vibrations which went to the bottom 
of the hearer’s soul. However, by dint of 
application, he contrived to overcome its 
stiffness, to enrich it with all the accents of 
passion, and to render it amenable to all the 
delicate inflexions of sentiment. He had, in 
fact, studied his voice as one studies an in- 
strument. He knew all its qualities and all 
its defects. He passed lightly over the 
harsh to give fuller effect to the vibrations 
of the harmonious chords. His voice, on 
which he essayed every accent, became a rich- 
keyed instrument, from which he could draw 
forth at pleasure every sound he stood in 
need of. And such is the power of a voice 
thus formed by nature attuned by art, that it 
affects even the foreigner who does not un- 
derstand the words. Frenchmen who are 


raed 


totally unacquainted with English have been 
affected even to tears by the accents of the 
touching voice of Miss O’Neil. 

At the commencement of his career, Le- 
Kain, like all young actors, gave way to bois- 
terous cries and violent movement, believing 
that in this way he triumpht over difficul- 
ties. In time, however, he felt that of all 
monotonies that of the lungs was the most 
unsupportable; that tragedy must be spoken, 
not howled; that a continual explosion fa- 
tigues without appealing; and that only when 
it is rare and unexpected can it astonish and 
move. He felt, in fine, that the auditor, 
shockt by the ranting on the stage, forgets 
the personage represented, and pities or con- 
demns the actor. Thus Lekain, often fa- 
tigued in long and arduous scenes, took care 
to conceal from the public the violence of his 
efforts, and at the very moment when his 
powers were nearly exhausted they seemed 
to possess all their strength and vigor. 

Lekain has been reproacht for having 
been heavy in his recitation. This defect 
was natural. He was slow, calm, and reflect- 
ing. Besides, Voltaire, whose actor he pe- 
culiarly was, would not, perhaps, have read- 


30 


ily consented to sacrifice the pomp and har- 
mony of his verse to a more natural tone. 
He wisht him to be energetic, and as he had 
deckt out tragedy a little the actor was 
obliged to follow in the track of the poet. 
Again, in the days of Lekain, a period so 
brilliant from the genius of its writers and 
philosophers, all the arts of imitation had 
fallen into a false and mannered taste, and 
Lekain, perhaps, thought himself sufficiently 
rich in all his gifts and attainments to make 
a slight concession to the bad taste of his 
days. Yet his style, at first slow and ca- 
denced, by degrees became animated, and 
from the moment he gained the high region 
of passion he astonisht by his sublimity. 
Notwithstanding the bad taste alluded to, 
there existed in society at that time, and 
among the friends of Voltaire, a great 
number of persons whose ideas in matters 
of art were more correct, and their advice 
was of great service to Lekain. Voltaire, 
also, tho he was a very indifferent actor, 
even when he played in his own pieces, pos- 
sest a good theatrical knowledge of the 
stage; this he communicated to Lekain, who 
profited by it. During one of the actor’s 


31 


visits to Ferney Voltaire made him totally 
change his manner of playing Genghis-Khan, 
in the ‘Orphan of China.’ On his return to 
Paris it was the first character he played. 
The audience, astonisht at the change, 
was for a long time undecided whether to 
praise or blame the performance. They 
could not but think that the actor was indis- 
posed. ‘There was nothing of the turbulance 
or the trickery which had previously pro- 
cured him so much applause in the same 
part. It was only after the fall of the cur- 
tain that the audience felt that Lekain was 
right. Public opinion was formed instan- 
taneously, and by an electrical movement it 
manifested itself in long and loud applause. 
“What's the matter?” asked Lekain of Rou- 
geot, a servant of the theater. “It’s ap- 
plause, monsieur; they are at length of your 
way of thinking.” 

Experience had taught Lekain that all the 
silly combinations of mediocrity, the con- 
trast of sounds, and ranting and raving 
might evoke great applause and many 
bravos; but it conferred no reputation. The 
lovers of noise and vociferation fancy their 
souls are wooed, while only their ears are 


32 


stunned. There is a certain number of 
artists, connoisseurs, and intelligent persons 
who are sensible only to what is true and 
conformable to nature. These persons do 
not like much noise, and it is upon their 
opinion that an actor’s reputation depends. 
Lekain despised those plaudits which tor- 
ment and often distract an actor. He re- 
solved to study only that part of the public 
which was worth pleasing. He rejected all 
the charlatanism of his art, and produced a 
true effect; he always discarded the claptraps 
which so many others seek to discover. He 
was, consequently, one of the actors the least 
appreciated in his day, but he was the most 
admired by competent judges, and he ren- 
dered tragedy more familiar without depriv- 
ing it of its majestic proportions. 

He knew how to regulate all his move- 
ments and all his actions. He regarded this 
as a very essential part of his art. For ac- 
tion is language in another form. [If it is 
violent or hurried, the carriage ceases to be 
noble. Thus, while other actors were thea- 
trical kings only, in him the dignity did not 
appear to be the result of effort, but the 
simple effect of habit. He did not raise his 


33 


shoulders or swell his voice to give an order. 
He knew that men in power had no need of 
such efforts to make themselves obeyed, and 
that in the sphere they occupy all their words 
have weight and all their movements au- 
thority. Lekain displayed superior intelli- 
gence and great ability in the varied styles 
of his recitation, which was slow or rapid, 
as circumstances required; and his pauses 
were always full of deep significance. There 
are, in fact, certain circumstances in which it 
is necessary to solicit one’s self before we 
confide to the tongue the emotions of the 
soul or the calculations of the mind. The 
actor, therefore, must have the art of think- 
ing before he speaks, and by introducing 
pauses he appears to meditate upon what 
he is about to say. But his physiognomy 
must correspond also with the suspensions 
of his voice. His attitudes and features 
must indicate that during these moments of 
silence his soul is deeply engaged; without 
this his pauses will seem rather to be the 
result of defective memory than a secret 
of his art. 

There are also situations in which a per- 
son strongly moved feels too acutely to wait 


34 


the slow combination of words. The senti- 
ment that overpowers him escapes in mute 
action before the voice is able to give it ut- 
terance. The gesture, the attitude, and the 
look ought, then, to precede the words, as the 
flash of the lightning precedes the thunder. 
The display adds greatly to the expression, 
as it discovers a mind so profoundly im- 
bued that, impatient to manifest itself, it has 
chosen the more rapid signs. These arti- 
fices contribute what is properly called by- 
play, a most essential part of the theatrical 
art, and most difficult to acquire, retain, and 
regulate well. It is by this means that the 
actor gives to his speech an air of truth, and 
takes from it all appearance of measured 
speaking. 

There are also situations in which a per- 
son transported by the violence of feeling 
finds at once all the expression he wishes. 
The words come to his lips as rapidly as 
the thoughts to his mind; they are born with 
them, and succeed each other without inter- 
ruption. The mind of the actor, then, ought 
to be hurried and rapid; he must even con- 
ceal from the audience the effort he makes to 
prolong his breath. This effort he must 


35 


make, since the slightest interruption or the 
slightest pause would destroy the illusion, 
because the mind would seem to participate 
in this pause. Besides, passion does not 
follow the rules of grammar; it pays but 
little respect to colons, and semi-colons, and 
full stops, which it displaces without any 
ceremony. 

Lekain had a long illness a few years be- 
fore his death, and it was to this illness that 
he owed the perfect development and re- 
fining of his talents. This may appear 
strange, but it is literally true. There are 
violent crises and certain disorders in the 
animal economy which often excite the nerv- 
ous system and give the imagination an in- 
conceivable impetus. The body suffers, but 
the mind is active. Persons stricken down 
by illness have astonisht us by the vivacity 
of their ideas; others remember things com- 
pletely forgotten; others seem to pierce the 
veil which hangs between them and the fu- 
ture. Perhaps Chénier was not wrong in 
saying that “Heaven gives prophetic accents 
to the dying.”’ 

When the illness passes away something of 
the excess of sensibility always remains im- 


36 


printed on the nervous system; the emotions 
are more profound, and all our sensations 
acquire more delicacy. It would seem as if 
these shocks purified and renewed our being; 
and this was the effect which his illness had 
upon Lekain. The inaction to which he had 
been reduced became of service to him; his 
rest was that of labor. Genius does not al- 
ways require exercise, and, like the gold 
mine, it forms and perfects itself in silence 
and repose. 

He reappeared on the stage after a long 
absence. The audience, instead of having to 
show indulgence to a man enfeebled by suf- 
fering, saw him, as it were, ascend from the 
tomb with a more perfect intelligence, seem- 
ingly clothed with a purer, more perfect 
existence. It was then that he rejected what 
his intelligence disapproved. ‘There were no 
more cries, no more efforts of the lungs, no 
more of those ordinary griefs, no more of 
those vulgar tears, which lessen and degrade 
the personage. His voice, at once pleasant 
and sonorous, had acquired new accents and 
vibrations which found responsive chords in 
every heart; his tears were heroic and pene- 
trating, his acting—full, profound, pathetic, 


37 


and terrible—roused and moved even the 
most insensible of his hearers. 

It was also at this latter period of his life, 
having acquired a greater knowledge of the 
passions, and having himself perhaps wit- 
nest deep anguish, he was the better able to 
paint it; and if he frequently, to express 
great sorrow, suffered his melancholy and 
dolorous voice to escape thru sobs and tears, 
often, too, in the highest degree of moral 
suffering, his voice changed; it became veiled 
and uttered only inarticulate sounds of woe. 
His eyes appeared dull with sorrow, and 
shed no tears, which seemed to be chased 
back on the heart. Admirable artifice! drawn 
from nature, and more calculated to move 
the soul than tears themselves; for in real 
life, while we pity those who weep, we feel, 
at least, that tears are a relief to them; but 
how much more is our pity excited at the 
sight of the unfortunate being whom the ex- 
cess of deep despair deprives of voice to ex- 
press his suffering, and of tears to relieve 
him. 

Lekain was the creature of passion; he 
never loved but to madness; and, it is said, 
he hated in the same manner. He whose 


38 


soul is not susceptible to the extremes of pas- 
sion will never rise to excellence as an actor. 
In the expression of the passions there are 
many shades which cannot be devined and 
which the actor cannot paint until he has felt 
them himself. The observations which he 
has made on his own nature serve at once 
for his study and example; he interrogates 
himself on the impressions his soul has felt, 
on the expression they imprinted upon his 
features, on the accents of his voice in the 
various states of feeling. He meditates on 
these, and clothes the fictitious passions with 
these real forms. I scarcely know how to 
confess that, in my own person, in any cir- 
cumstance of my life in which I experienced _ 
deep sorrow, the passion of the theater was 
so strong in me that, altho opprest with real 
sorrow, and disregarding the tears I shed, I 
made, in spite of myself, a rapid and fugi- 
tive observation on the alteration of my 
voice, and on a certain spasmodic vibration 
which it contracted as I wept; and, I say it, 
not without some shame, I even thought 
of making use of this on'the stage, and, in- 
deed, this experiment on myself has often 
been of service to me. 


39 


The contrarieties, the sorrows, and mel- 
ancholy reflexions which an actor may apply 
to the personage he represents, in exciting 
his sensibility, place him in the degree of 
agitation necessary for the development of 
his faculties. Lekain thus found, in his 
own passions, display for his talents. As to 
the odious characters and vile passions, of 
which the type was not in him—for no man 
was more honorable than Lekain — he 
painted them by analogy. In fact, amongst 
the irregular passions which disgrace hu- 
manity, there are some which possess points 
of contact with those which ennoble it. Thus, 
the sentiment of a lofty emulation enables 
us to divine what envy may feel; the just 
resentment of wrongs shows us in miniature 
the excess of hatred and vengeance. Re- 
serve and prudence enable us to paint dissim- 
ulation. The desires, the torments, and the 
jealousies of love enable us to conceive all 
its frenzies and initiate us in the secret of its 
crimes. 

These combinations, these comparisons, 
are the result of a rapid and imperceptible 
labor of sensibility, united with intelligence, 
which secretly operates on the actor as on 


40 


the poet, and which reveals to them what is 
foreign to their own nature—the viler pas- 
sions of guilty and corrupted minds. ‘Thus 
Milton, a man of austere probity, and so 
full of the divine power, created the person- 
age of Satan. Corneille, the simplest and 
the worthiest of men, created Phocas and 
Felix; Racine, Nero and Narcissus. Vol- 
taire has painted the effects of fanaticism 
with a frightful truth; and Ducis, whose 
taste was simple, and whose life was relig- 
ious, painted, in Albufar, in traits of fire, all 
the transports of incestuous love. 

These terminate my hasty reflexions on 
Lekain and our art. I have thrown them 
together without order; but I hope, in the 
quietude of silence and repose, to resume the 
subject, and give, for the use of my success- 
ors, the result of a long experience in a 
career devoted entirely to the advancement 
of the beautiful art I love so deeply. 


ni 


F; 
i 


(ae Lv) 
Nhu ait 


iad i 


ai) 


A ba 
À eo 


AURAI 4 

APN WIN int Hea pe ia 21h At 
pea Ai AS Re Wye 
} } APR 


i Nine 


1 ‘at 7. 
LOT 
A TA 
y RATE 

À 
ane 


LAN dere { MOT 4 q fi MAN MONT Mit JAUNE RAA A LAN POS 
ta : ES ahs Ui er ay ( ye fx 4 ihe iy Ws Ur My HAE ar Nie SAU 119 li 1 Wy NU GATE 
; PCNA AN ate in ne 4 RNA Ut nil PLAT vil Negi bakes Ht i tii tait 


ui 


REVIEW 


R. IRVING, in his preface to this 

M remarkable essay, calls it a kind 
of vade-mecum of the actor’s 

calling, written by one of themselves, and 
by an artist universally recognized as a 
competent expositor; ‘a permanent em- 
bodiment of the principles of our art.” 
We may then start with every confidence 
that we have here a true explanation of the 
manner in which a great actor works. Let 
us listen to his words. “Every actor,’ says 
Talma, “ought to be his own tutor. If he 
has not in himself the necessary faculties for 
expressing the passions and painting charac- 
ters, all the lessons in the world cannot give 
them to him. The faculty of creating is 
born with us; but if the actor possesses it the 
counsel of persons of taste may then guide 
him; and as there is in the art of reciting 
verse a part in some degree mechanical, the 
lessons of an actor profoundly versed in 
his art may save him much study and time.” 
Here, we take it, is the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth as to dra- 


45 


matic teaching. A man may be taught to 
speak and move well and suitably; then, if 
he has genius, he may in twenty years teach 
himself to act, and during the process he 
may be much helpt by the counsel of persons 
of taste. And how is he to know whether 
he has the necessary genius? Talma an- 
swers, “sensibility” and “intelligence” are 
the two faculties pre-eminently required, but 
under the general heading of sensibility he 
includes much. He puts almost contemptu- 
ously on one side ‘the faculty which an actor 
possesses of being moved himself and of 
affecting his being so far as to imprint on 
his features, and especially on his voice, that 
expression and those accents of sorrow which 
awake sympathy and extort tears.’ No 
doubt the actor must have this kind of sen- 
sibility; but to this extent sensibility is not 
rare. It may sometimes be recognized in 
amateurs acting for the first time; and we 
take it that no moderately successful actor, 
even on a second-rate provincial stage, ever 
wanted sensibility to this extent. Let us 
call it, for the purpose of future reference, 
sensibility in the first degree, and then pass 
to what Talma further requires and still 


46 


calls sensibility—namely, that imagination 
which enables the actor to look on the lives 
of historical personages, or the impassioned 
figures created by genius, which reveals to 
him as tho by magic their physiognomy, their 
heroic stature, their language, their habits, 
all the shades of their character, all the 
movements of their soul, and even their 
singularities. We begin to feel that sensi- 
bility in the second degree is more difficult 
of attainment, and here it is well to remark 
that Talma does not place this faculty under 
the heading of “intelligence.” He does not 
tell the actor that he must understand his 
author. This insight which he so justly ac- 
quires is to be a matter of feeling. The rev- 
elation comes by magic, not logic. Fanny 
Kemble says, in perfect accord with Talma, 
perception rather than reflexion reaches the 
aim proposed. It is the absence of this sen- 
sibility in the second degree that makes 
many ordinary fairly good actors so insuf- 
ferably bad in great parts. Probably they 
understand the words they speak, and have 
a vague notion of what the person they rep- 
resent may be supposed to feel, but they have 
no insight into heroic thought or feeling; 


47 


and, says Talma, ‘if the actor is not en- 
dowed with a sensibility at least equal to that 
of any of his audience, he can move them 
but very little.” Too often our actors have 
less of this sensibility than many of those 
who hear them. Why then, it may be asked, 
do not audience and actors change places? 
Because the sensitive hearers lack sensibility 
in the third degree—for Talma has not done 
with this word yet. He includes in this term 
“the faculty of exaltation which agitates an 
actor, takes possession of his senses, shakes 
even his very soul, and enables him to enter 
into the most tragic situations and the most 
terrible of the passions as if they were his 
own.” 

Now, not one of the audience, which con- 
demn the second-rate actor in a great part 
because they have more sensibility than he 
has, will be found capable of the kind of 
exaltation here described. We think that 
here Talma has confused or blended two 
very different faculties under one name. To 
feel and to express were one to the great 
actor, but the vast majority of mankind is, 
we think, denied the gift of expressing emo- 
tion. And here it seems to us that Talma 


48 


misses the very point which distinguishes the 
actor from other artists. All artists must 
have this sensibility he demands, but the 
form which each naturally employs to ex- 
press his emotion determines whether he 
shall be author, painter, musician or actor. 
Under the influence of this ‘‘exaltation’’ the 
actor finds the tone, the look, the gesture 
required to express the feeling with which 
he is inspired, and this gift is, to some 
extent, possest by all actors who can earn 
their bread. This is the faculty which is 
trained by stage practice. And here we 
may again refer for support to ‘Notes on 
some of Shakspere’s Plays,’ by F. A. Kem- 
ble. Speaking with the authority of tradi- 
tion in a great family she says, “There is a 
specific comprehension of effect and the 
means of producing it, which in some persons 
is a distinct capacity, and this forms what 
actors call the study of their profession.” 
And altho Talma mixt up expression and 
feeling when endeavoring in a brief way to 
write an analytical account of his own art, 
he takes precisely this view of study. Here 
is his method. ‘The actor who possesses 
this double gift’ [sensibility and intelli- 


49 


gence] “adopts a course of study peculiar to 
himself. In the first place, by repeated exer- 
cises he enters deeply into the emotions, and 
his speech acquires the accent proper to the 
situation of the personage he has to repre- 
sent. This done, he goes to the theater not 
only to give theatrical effect to his studies, 
but also to yield himself to the spontaneous 
flashes of his sensibility and all the emotions 
which it voluntarily produces in him. What 
does he then do? In order that his inspira- 
tions may not be lost, his memory, in the 
silence of repose, recalls the accent of his 
voice, the expression of his features, his 
action—in a word, the spontaneous workings 
of his mind which he had supposed to have 
free course, and, in effect, everything which 
in the moments of his exaltation contributed 
to the effect he had produced. His intelli- 
gence thus passes all these means in review, 
connecting them and fixing them in his mem- 
ory, to re-employ them at pleasure in suc- 
ceeding representations.” This passage ex- 
presses better than anything we have ever 
read what the actor’s study really should be. 
After a certain amount of preparation, he 
yields in a state of exaltation to impulse; sug- 


50 


gestions crowd upon him; tones, cries, ges- 
tures, expressions, actions, are created. The 
exaltation is extreme, and these moments 
when he is alone, and the god works in him 
may be those of keenest pleasure. But this 
state is succeeded by a calm and critical 
mood, in which the true artist chooses, re- 
jects, and groups the partial effects obtained 
so as to produce one great and consistent 
whole. In this work, he will be greatly aided 
if he has a sympathetic friend of sound 
judgment—Talma’s ‘person of taste”— 
whose counsel he may take. Those who 
know what this study means are driven 
almost to distraction when they hear an 
actor—perhaps a great actor—compli- 
mented on being able to remember the words 
of his part. But, on the other hand, it must 
be almost as galling when a great actor is 
told that he really understands his author’s 
meaning. One great charm in this essay by 
Talma lies in the total absence of this con- 
temptible worship of the human understand- 
ing—a very good thing in its way, tho one 
of but small importance in mere art. To 
Talma intelligence meant a sound critical 
faculty, not logical, but perceptive, enabling 


SI 


its possessor to keep what was good in art 
and reject that which was less good. We 
find in this essay a clear solution of the ques- 
tion continually askt, whether the actor really 
feels what he is acting. Talma, as we un- 
derstand him, only felt the emotion once in 
its full intensity—that is to say, at the mo- 
ment of creation during the solitary re- 
hearsal. Subsequently the effect was pro- 
duced by the aid of memory; but the body is 
so constituted that if by the aid of memory 
we perfectly reproduce a tone or cry, that 
tone or cry brings back simultaneously a close 
reproduction of the feeling by which it was 
first created. Thus to act a great part a 
man must be capable of real greatness. As 
Talma says: “He will never rise to excellence 
as an actor whose soul is not susceptible of 
the extremes of passion.” And yet the rep- 
resentation night after night of these great 
feelings may come to be almost mechanical, 
or, rather, the feelings of the actor can be 
almost mechanically reawakened by the ex- 
cellence of his own art. Thus in describing 
Lekain at his best period, when his art was 
ripe, he says: ‘Accent, inflexions, actions, 
attitudes, looks, all were reproduced at every 


52 


representation with the same exactness, the 
same vigor; and if there was any difference 
between one representation and another, it 
was always in favor of the last.”  Spon- 
taneity is an admirable gift, but you cannot 
be spontaneous a second time. Spontaneous 
movements are right and necessary at the 
moment of creation, but are wholly out of 
place before an audience. 

Talma liked good scenery and correct 
dresses, but one feels that if he were alive 
now, he might say, faut de la vertu, pas trop 
n'en faut. His remarks on truth and nature 
are true and natural. He points out, taught 
by the scenes he had witnest during the 
Reign of Terror, that “the man of the world 
and the man of the people, so opposite in 
their language, frequently express the great 
agitations of the mind in the same way,” and 
that ‘the great movements of the soul ele- 
vate man to an ideal nature in whatever rank 
fate may have placed him.” While, how- 
ever, he recommends the observation of pas- 
sion in others, it is clear that he never con- 
descended to mimicry. Some talent for 
mimicry is very common among actors, and 
is indeed a useful accomplishment, especially 


12 


in the lower walks of the profession: but no 
man can ever hope to play Coriolanus by 
mimicking some ‘statesman. 

Talma’s chief observations were made 
upon himself. He attended to his own 
tones, his own fact, when in real grief; he is 
half ashamed and half proud of having 
done so. We imagine that all artists are 
alike on this point, and that in this fact lies 
a certain compensation for the exact keen- 
ness of their feelings. They suffer more 
than any other men, and get more good 
from suffering. Talma observed that an 
emotion truly exprest moved an audience 
which did not understand the words. Most 
people would attribute this to gesture; but 
he, rightly as we think, considered the effect 
as due to the voice, and as an instance he 
speaks of Miss O’Neil moving Frenchmen 
who did not understand her to tears. The 
point is a curious one, for we have observed 
that a foreigner can judge artistic truth in 
acting with fair success when he is wholly 
incapable of appreciating any little niceties 
of accent or elocution. Thus too we allow 
foreigners to act on our stage who cannot 
speak one word so as to be acceptable to our 


54 


ears in English. Yet their tones will bring 
tears almost as readily as if they spoke with 
English tongues. We believé that this ad- 
mits of explanation; but the theory would de- 
mand too much space to be developed here. 
Let all those who are interested in acting 
read Talma’s essay; and then, if they wish 
for a little amusement, they may turn to the 
‘Actor’s Art, by Mr. Gustave Garcia. 
Talma tells his readers what a great actor 
must learn, Mr. Garcia explains what small 
actors can be taught and do learn. 


55 


y 
HAN] 


te 


Min 
Rotenib 


iy 
i, 


HAUT 
LA dant 


NG i 
ie iid 


41 | 
VERTE 
AUC 


NOTES 


EKAIN (1729-1778 was the fore- 
most tragic actor of France in his 
generation as Talma was the fore- 
most tragic actor of the succeed- 

ing generation. He owed to the friendly 
admiration of Voltaire his admission into 
the Comédie-Française when he was only 
twenty-one. He had against him certain 
physical disadvantages; and he had in 
his favor a rich, warm voice, which he cul- 
tivated assiduously until it became a supple 
instrument for rendering passion. At Vol- 
taire’s suggestion he was invited to Potsdam 
by Frederick the Great. To him and to 
Mlle. Clairon were due two important re- 
forms in the French theater,—the striking 
advance in the propriety of costuming and 
the clearing of the stage of the Theatre 
Francais of the mob of courtiers who had 
until then been privileged to occupy seats in 
close proximity to the actors. 

Talma (1763-1826) spent a part of his 
youth in England; and he made his first ap- 
pearance at the Théatre Francais in 1787, 
when he was twenty-four. He excelled in 
the chief characters of French classicist tra- 
gedy; and he gave them an external verisimil- 
itude by donning flowing white robes de- 


59 


signed for him by his friend David, the 
painter. During the French revolution he 
became intimate with Napoleon I, retaining 
this friendship even after the establishment 
of the Empire. When Napoleon went to 
meet the Czar at Erfurt in 1808 he took 
with him alma and others of the Comédie- 
Française, telling him that they were to per- 
form “before a parterre of Kings.” He sur- 
vived to behold the beginnings of the Ro- 
manticist revolt which was to overthrow the 
rigorous code of the Classicists, and both 
Victor Hugo and the elder Dumas have re- 
corded the admiration they felt for his skill 
as an actor. 

The autobiography of Lekain edited by 
his son first appeared in Paris in the 
year X. When the volume was included in 
1825 in a series of dramatic memoirs, there 
was prefixt to it a paper entitled ‘Reflexions 
on Lekain and on the Actor’s Art, by 
Talma. This essay revealed the fact that 
Talma had thought profoundly about the art 
which he brilliantly adorned; and that he 
was able to present his thoughts skilfully. 
The significance and the importance of what 
Talma had written was immediately recog- 
nized; and in all later French discussion of 
the principles and the practice of the his- 
trionic art, the words of the great French 
tragedian were frequently cited. 


60 


At the suggestion of Sir Henry Irving, 
whose position at the head of the British 
stage was as undisputed as had been Talma’s 
leadership in the French theater, the essay 
was translated by some person unknown and 
publisht in 1877 in a British monthly, the 
Theater. From this magazine the anony- 
mous translation was reprinted as a pam- 
phlet, entitled ‘Talma on the Actor’s Art,’ 
which was issued in 1883, with a preface by 
Sir Henry Irving. This publication brought 
the paper to the attention of the English- 
speaking public for the first time; and its 
own merits and the eulogy bestowed upon 
it by Irving evoked a host of reviews in the 
British and American periodicals of the 
time. | 

As might be expected most of these 
ephemeral criticisms were valueless. One of 
them, however, that which appeared in the 
Saturday Review, was a solid contribution 
to the subject. It was written by a life-long 
student of the theory and practise of the art 
of acting,—Fleeming Jenkin, professor of 
engineering in the University of Edinburgh. 
He was a man of varied intellectual interests, 
—as must be well known to all those who 
may have read the memoir affectionately 
written by his former pupil, Robert Louis 
Stevenson. This brief biography was pre- 
pared as an introduction to the two volumes 


61 


in which the literary and scientific papers of 
Fleeming Jenkin were collected. These vol- 
umes were publisht in London in 1887 by 
Longmans, Green and Co.; and they re- 
plevined from the swift oblivion of the back- 
number two articles on the acting of Mrs. 
Siddons and this review of Talma’s essay. 
It is by the kind permission of Mrs. Fleem- 
ing Jenkin and of Longmans, Green and Co. 
that this paper is here printed as a most use- 
ful commentary on both Talma and Irving. 
The discussion of the principles and the 
practise of his art by an artist who can ana- 
lize his instinctive and intuitive processes is 
always useful to all who seek to inquire into 
the secrets of the craft; but these analyses 
tend to the undue consideration of technic 
and they are vital only where the artist hap- 
pens also to possess range as well as depth 
of vision. This double qualification is 
Talma’s as obviously as it was also Samson’s 
and Coquelin’s. On the other hand Mrs. 
Siddons and Salvini, mighty as they were in 
the impersonation of great characters, were 
incompetent to analize these very parts; and 
Mrs. Siddons’ essay on Lady Macbeth is as 
empty as Salvini’s paper on Othello. ~ 
Talma has luminously indicated what an 
actor must do to make himself master of a 
part; and it is interesting to supplement this 
with the account of his own method of get- 


62 


ting inside the skin of a character which 
Coquelin once gave to an interviewer :— 
“When I have to create a part, I begin by 
reading the play with the greatest attention 
five or six times. First, I consider what po- 
sition my character should occupy, on what 
plane in the picture I must put him. Then I 
study his psychology, knowing what he 
thinks, what he is morally. I deduce what 
he ought to be physically, what will be his 
carriage, his manner of speaking, his ges- 
ture. These characteristics once decided, I 
learn the part without thinking about it fur- 
ther; then, when I know it, I take up my 
man again and, closing my eyes, I say to him, 
‘Recite this for me.’ Then I see him deliv- 
ering the speech, the sentence I askt him for; 
he lives, he speaks, he gesticulates before 
me; and then I have only to imitate him.” 


B. M. 


63 


Whisy 
NL 


OF THIS BOOK THREE HUNDRED AND 


_ THIRTY-THREE COPIES WERE PRINTED _ 
FROM TYPE BY CORLIES, MACY AND 
COMPANY IN SEPTEMBER, MCMXV 


4 


[A 


HR 
hs AW 


aA 


At | 
{ yy 
WU 
nl 


8 

v 
us 
HAN 2] 


FRA 
k A UE ALES! 


x 


i 
ea RAS 


Cube 
ai ii 
PA Lt Gh Pay Al APN i ni nv | CUP eure Let oil ‘ he x | Ab ACTOR 
f eh HEALS at HEN A CUA tin kU tah Ek Lb CHA Ad si tba) PO RV RAN Meets 


4 Mi 


This book is due at the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY onthe 
last date stamped under “Date Due.” If not on hold it may be 
renewed by bringing it to the library. 


DATE DATE 


RET. 
DUE me 


RET. 


ag 


£ à yo of 
æ 
ee 
fe>| 


E 
ioe |} 
Le” ~ LA 
{| =~ 
« 
| ao 7 
; . 
re 
— 
| 4 
L 2 
OE, EE SS Ke SA ns 


PUBLICATIONS OF TH 
DRAMATIC MUSEUM 0. 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSIT’ 


SECOND SERIES 


